2. Imperialist slaughter [September 1939 – July 1940]¶
Core Argument¶
In the first months of the Second World War, from September 1939 to July 1940, no decisive victory was achieved; both sides merely prepared for a spring offensive. The true aims of the belligerents were quickly revealed. Germany threatened neutral nations to secure continental domination, while Britain, despite hypocritical claims to defend small states, bullied them just as ruthlessly. Churchill openly threatened neutrals, exposing that British strategy cared only for its own imperial interests. The Allies courted Mussolini and Franco, proving their professed opposition to “dictatorship” was fraudulent. In conquered Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Nazis imposed brutal exploitation, but this was merely imperialism’s standard method—Britain had built its empire the same way. The British ruling class was responsible for Hitler’s rise and had sought a deal with him at Munich. The Labour leaders betrayed the working class by backing Churchill’s national unity government, while the Stalinist leaders of the CPGB, following the Hitler-Stalin pact, offered fake anti-war agitation that amounted to peace on Hitler’s terms.
The Altmark incident of February 1940, a naval skirmish in neutral Norwegian waters, boosted British morale but spurred Hitler to accelerate the occupation of Denmark and Norway. The war became a ruthless slaughter: a quarter of the Dutch army was wiped out in days; mass air raids on Rotterdam destroyed a third of its buildings, killing or injuring 100,000. The French ruling class, having suppressed the domestic masses, proved incapable of resisting the Nazi invasion. They refused to arm the workers for defence, fearing a revolutionary uprising as in 1870. Paris was handed over intact to the Germans. The real fifth column was the capitulationist government of financiers and generals, who preferred Nazi rule to working-class victory. The British ruling class is equally rotten; there is no guarantee they will not capitulate as the French did. The only guarantee of successful resistance is arming the working class under workers’ committee control. The Labour leaders, now in government, pursue the same disastrous policy. The only solution is not peace on Hitler’s terms but class revolt: workers in each country must overthrow their own capitalists and establish a socialist united states of Europe.